Bihar and The Holy Cow! of Indian politics

It is interesting to see so many celebrating Bihar's verdict, are in fact celebrating BJP's loss than JDU's victory. You have all the right to do what pleases you, so your fun is well deserved. Now that Delhi and Bihar have given you enough satisfaction of BJP bashing, lets look at the good, bad and ugly.

I don't mean to disrespect the choice, the people of Bihar made for themselves- they have all the right to do so. But this is an appeal to all the logical thinkers out there to look at the things in the right perspective.

The Good:

1. BJP's arrogance is rewarded

Following the news debates, it is pretty obvious to me that they became arrogant. They tend to go into Idolizing Modi mode, or Congress bashing mode, more than addressing the issues at hand. It serves them right that they have to face the humiliation.

2. Its proven that Muslim bashing will not work, for BJP

India has the 3rd largest muslim population in the world. It doesn't work to a policy to bash them as a community, as a whole. There has to be a way to address radical elements by not targeting an entire community. Pakistan, as an enemy state to India will celebrate, if India looses its development narrative, is a valid, politically incorrect statement. It is paradoxical that saying so in itself is an undoing of the cause.

3. Nitish Kumar will get another chance to drive his agenda (or really?)

Nitish Kumar was will always be remembered a leader that showed hope to the sad state of affairs of the state of Bihar. But by teaming up with the very person who is the reason for the failure in the first place, will he be able to maintain his sanctity- time will only tell.

The Bad:

1. The hypocrisy of the elite is pampered

Some of my friends complain that I use this word a lot. But what do I do, if I can see it more clearly than others. BJP is bad because they incite religion, but what about inciting caste for political gains? I agree that the BJP has become Arrogant, but that is nothing compared to the Arrogance shown by the elite, stereotypically represented by the top journalists. The way their faces light-up when they get a chance to bully a BJP spokesperson shows how grateful they are to the very system that fed them all the while, on the expense of the real people of the country.

2. India is forgotten

We want to prosper economically, stable and secure. Build a country that can stand on its own. Make agriculture more profitable. Indian culture should get a global recognition/respect. Values should be built, respected and protected in a way that corruption becomes an ethical outlaw. But instead, all that I hear is, lets punish Modi, because he is not as good as he claimed to be, or he has some people in his party with loose tongue. Saying that will make a Bakth, because that is what tolerant people do.

The Ugly:

1. A lie spoken 100 times becomes the truth

The intolerance is on rise when Beef is banned. But when is it really banned? The media makes it a sensation, and we fall for it, we debate it, we believe it. Porn is banned (for a couple of days). We outrage. Alcohol is banned, we celebrate. Why not? its not by BJP. A crime happens in a village in UP (Google says that India has around 638,000 villages), we return awards.

Lalu rises the issue in the election campaign, we celebrate him. Him, the Lalu Prasad Yadav- I have a point to make about him, which I will do a little later.

2. Ignorance

We are celebrating the victory of a team of three, two of whom are the very people we wanted to save the country from. Who am I to say, who is good or who is bad. I have 1 in 1.25 Billion right/share to decide what is right. But I tend to believe the philosophy that congress has become too corrupt to even resurrect, and I am representing that viewpoint in this blog.

Lalu and Congress, now share power. If that makes you happy, you have a real reason to celebrate. But if you are just celebrating because BJP lost, think again!

For someone who got into politics, hijacking JP's platform of social justice, became the epitome of corruption and misrule, made a public joke of the system, by running this sate on his wife's name, Lalu has his last laugh on the Indian people. He knows that he has the right to bring cow to the electoral fray, and BJP will have to/would ride that to defeat. He knows that he can publicly bash specific castes and that his victory would make the country more secular. He knows that he can stand tall on the platform of development, for which he himself destroyed to the core foundation, and the intolerant Indian's will tolerate.

This is my view on what happened, and this is what I think will happen next:

1. The radical voices in BJP will start taking over, now that Modi, Shah have failed twice. The irony is, that will give the hungry elite some more fresh oxygen to do some more Modi bashing.
2. The political equations will rally around UP and Punjab. Tamil Nadu elections will not see the glare in the national media.
3. Given that Caste and Indian Politics are inseparable and is an accepted thing, we have to see if BSP and BJP can come together. I think that depends on how well, Lalu and Nitish will get together. That tells us whether the congress can come back to its glorious dark past.
4. It will be interesting to see if AAP and Congress will come together for a pre-poll alliance, given that it is slowly being fed to us that corruption is a non issue and the real issue is secularism, tolerance or something else that will come up in an year from now, in these lines.

Anything else? Let me know in the comments, as well as your views on how you see these elections/results.

BJP and secularism

In this post, I want to talk about the perception that we carry about BJP. And by the way, this perception not only talks about BJP, it teaches us what secularism means. It tells us that the India is a developing country. It tells us India as a county has no hope. Hope can only be given to sections of society by treating them differently, at the cost of the others. A zero sum game essentially.

"Vajpayee is good, but the party is not" was the general perception. "BJP is good, but Modi is not" is the perception we are being sold now. Advani, who couldn't become the PM, because of this perception, suddenly becomes a saint. But I think in reality, it is not so much about people.

"They did stupid things before coming to power, but they did really well after coming to power", a friend of mine was saying. The stupid thing was obviously a reference to the Ram Mandir. I do believe that the evils of the past should be left to rest. I do believe that religion is a private affair that will look ugly if not silly if brought to road. In fact I did also believe that the exploitation of the Islamic innovations on India are just a paragraph in history books, that are rightly followed by tones of good they did. I did also believe that the epics are just myths and fiction has no relevance in real world. Things like an existence of a bridge to Lanka or an underwater city near Dwaraka are just a coincidence. My younger cousins go a step further. They believe that Harry Potter is more real than Ramayana (since the former is written later and by a Brit, may be) and (Chota) Bheem is a cartoon character. It was hard for me to understand why my grandfather stopped following sai baba, after his statement on Ram Mandir.

But my biggest surprise was the Allahabad High Court verdict on the very issue of Ram Mandir, when even a right wing liberal like me has given the judgement that there is no place for a temple there.
May be there is a reason that these thoughts find more validation in real courts. May be there is a reason why Modi gets a clean chit, and Lalu gets punished in these real courts. Or may be Salman Khurshid is right when he said in London that courts and EC are overdoing.

I would like to believe that secularism doesn't mean you reserve yourself from speaking for yourself if you are the majority. If I have so many apprehensions talking and writing about these, I don't blame Muslims or other communities, to carry this negative perception and a few conservatives either getting offended or exploiting it.

If there was an easier way, and this could be done away with a BUT, like, BJP is communal, but they are the only alternative, I could have left this to rest. If Vajpayee can talk about Bhagawan Ram in the parliament, and deliver a corruption free government, I think it's an 'and' not a 'but'. If Modi can work for 15+ hours a day, not to make money for his next 15 generations, I think it's more than just his ego.

Its a simple 101 that a riot or a communal clash happens when two communities are involved, and how come, it is always one party that represents the wrong. On the other hand, if there is a political party that you treats different religions differently, or treats different castes differently, that represents secularism or pluralism for us. Even a party like 'All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen' is not communal, forget the parties coming to power taking their support. But a party that allies with Bhartiya Janta Party have to think twice. Such is the state of affairs, and we are too very righteous to call it hypocrisy.

Did you notice that, you don't see BJP showing favoritism a lot, in their manifestos or otherwise. That is the reason they talk about development, and not communalism. Did you notice that Vajpayee's government built roads, not temples. Did you realize that the tough decisions taken by NDA are things like Kargil war or Pokhran tests, not dividing a state though a parliament blackout.

And yet, we see that BJP has to fight these perception battles, while we are happy to buy everything that is sold to us about this very perception. Finally, I believe that religion should be left as a private affair. And I see that it is the congress (including this B Team of AAP)  that is not letting us do that. They to be are the biggest threat to the secular fabric of our country, not the BJP.

Blogging till Elections 2014

2014 is here! India is going to elections, this very year. And I want to get back to blogging. The amount of time I spend on news channels these days, I definitely need a channel to vent my views out. And this blog has, for so many times in past been a good friend to my mine, listening to all that I had to say. Frankly, Facebook hasn't been the best place, at least without making me feeling guilty of polluting my friends' timelines! And of-course I can feel like Arnab Goswami, in this own little blog of mine!

For as back as my memories go, I always did have an active interest in politics. My grandfather is a graduate (hons.) from BHU, Varanasi, 1948. If there is a reason I can think beyond what the mainstream education/media constantly prescribed me into, he probably has the largest contribution. As much as it is true that social media has given me a voice for promotion of my views, of late, it felt cluttered and unstructured. And that probably is the main reason I want to construct my view in a series of blogs that go till the general elections at a minimum. And after that, lets see where it takes us to! (Long story short, I am trying to prove my credibility to even write something as tiny as this, and you better be convinced)

And whatever I write in this blog, I completely understand that, it is 'a' point of view and there can be other points of view that are equally valid. And I encourage you to read my writing as a argument towards that point of view I am representing and give it a fair hearing.

Now that I have beaten enough around the bush, let me come to the political views I represent/support:

I am a believer of BJP. This is not so much because of Modi (exclusively). Nor is it because of the fact that Congress Govt. sucked big time. I will hopefully be able to explain, in enough detail as to why BJP stands closest to the ideologies I believe in- but that is for another time. All that I wanted to say at this time is, I am pro BJP and not anti-congress.

As many of you might have known, one of my very good friends, Rakesh, has joined BJP  recently Here is the 'yourstory' article, for more details. Having seen him closely in BITS, Pilani as Gen Sec and otherwise, I can see the value he can bring on to the Indian politics. For me, promoting him, is the closest I can get to, in claiming my contribution to the greater good of the Indian governance and politics.

The cultural identity that we are happy to let go of, is actually alarming. It is true that the urbanization has its own impact in terms of making us culture neutral. But if you keep that aside, as Indians, we are programmed to disown our cultural roots. So much so that following our traditions is considered ethnic in our own land (Dictionary meaning of Ethnic: Associated with or belonging to a particular race or group of people who have a culture that is different from the main culture of a country)

India, as of now, is growing despite government. Its high time that we have a government that can help the growth and development. Loosing the smartest of the people as brain drain or to unemployment has to stop. And that can only happen through a strong stable government and a political will.

There are many more, but these are the primary ones, and the reasons for me to start putting my political thoughts on this glass pane of yours! Trust me, politics can be more interesting than many other things that you do not probably know (like- lets say ice skating) and is as rewarding as the plant that Ashoka planted in our history books. Looking forward for your comments.